Tesla Announces Official Details On Model S Firmware 6.0

Tesla Motors announced new v6.0 software update for Model S, which will bring over-the-air a set of new features.

According to Tesla, the new features will enable to further personalization of Model S.

“The Software v6.0 update introduces traffic-based navigation and commute advice, provides an in-car view of daily schedules, enables location-based air suspension settings, and allows owners to name their Model S and start it remotely using their mobile phone.”

Additional new features include:

Traffic-Based Navigation (BETA) The Model S navigation system will be a lot smarter. Navigation will now provide route suggestions based on real-time traffic and calculate estimated travel times accordingly. It will also update dynamically as traffic conditions change throughout your trip. This feature will also take into account traffic data shared by other Tesla vehicles on the road.

Commute Advice Navigation isn’t particularly useful when commuting between home and work because most of us usually know the way. But if traffic has an effect on a typical route, it’s helpful to know in advance. Now, Model S will monitor traffic before you even start your weekday commute and alert you with a pop-up message on the 17-inch touchscreen when a faster route is available.

Calendar (BETA) Model S will synch with your smartphone to bring you a large in-car view of your daily schedule. If you’ve already set locations for particular events, you don’t have to worry about re-entering the details into your car’s navigation system. Instead, you can just tap on the event in your calendar to bring up route directions.

Remote Start You will have the ability to start your Model S using only your smartphone. This function, which is particularly useful if you forget your key fob, will be accessible through the Tesla mobile app and requires you to input your password for each use.

Location-Based Air Suspension If you regularly drive on roads or driveways that require higher than normal clearance, your Model S will remember where you previously selected high ride heights and automatically adjust the air suspension at those locations. This feature will be especially handy for people who have steep driveways. (Model S must be equipped with air suspension for this function to work.)

Name Your Car You can now make your Model S nickname official. The car’s name will appear in the Tesla mobile app and in the About Your Tesla section on the touchscreen.

Power Management Options A new power management option will put Model S into energy saving mode at night to help maximize available energy. There’ll also be an option that allows the Tesla mobile app to always connect immediately to the car, while still saving power.

We have some heinous construction going on and the location based suspension comes in handy over some of the bumps! Not sure how to clear it once they’re done though!

Also, got into my car without the key and released I could start it with my phone, it was fun to try, not sure I’d use it often but I have been having my wife carry the spare key on road trips and now I won’t have to do that.

I’m more interested if/when they’ll officially announce an AWD Tesla S. My guess is around the time they give the specifics of the X

Updates are always nice, but some of these are pretty weak. Name your car? Really? I’m not against it but that’s pretty low hanging fruit.

Start your car with your phone? When do you forget your fob? It seems highly likely you’d forget your fob in the same location as your car. Do people often drive their car somewhere and then leave their fob somewhere else? If I left my fob in my home, office, friend’s place, Whole Foods, etc I’d probably want to go get it instead of just leaving it wherever.

Commute advice is nice.

Have they fixed the problem where Navigation maps appear as “North up” instead of orienting the map to the direction you’re driving? That’s a much bigger issue IMO.

So I would for sure buy a Tesla S AWD if it were to come out well before any other cheaper AWD competitor (like a year or more), unless it is priced similarly to the Tesla X AWD (then I’d buy the X instead).

But I’m still reasonably confident that the Outlander PHEV will come out around the same time as the X (my guess is Nov 2014), and I think the X will be out some time before the AWD S.

I will buy the first AWD EV or PHEV that gets to the US under $55k (before incentive) or so.

Caveat:
if the Outlander PHEV is priced anywhere near an AWD Tesla (like within $10k to 15k) then I’d do the Tesla because I MUCH prefer an EV over a PHEV. (so if I could get an AWD Tesla S for $64k and an Outlander for $52.5k, I’d probably groan and get the Tesla).

but I think Tesla will only offer AWD on its X and upper level model S… and not put it on the bare bones P60 S.

I expect an AWD S would be part of the performance package. You should expect to basically be at $100k (before the tax credit) for an S that would do 0 – 60 in the mid 3s.

Since all Model X will be AWD, I bet you could get a pretty bare version for $80k (before any tax incentives). Musk already said 2015 production is sold out, but that might be a stretch. But even if you put money down right now, you would be looking at the end of 2015 as a best case scenario.

It would be interesting to get more detail on the energy saving mode, as to whether this is the same energy saving that the car has had for about a year now. I’m told by the Tesla Rep that the energy saving mode uses very little range per day in moderate weather. Not sure how this reacts in 0 – 10 deg F weather.

Interesting article, including some of the Beta features. The volt has had some of this since day one effectively, through ONSTAR.

Geo-fencing is great! It works wonderfully! I use it in many locations. Getting a re-direct in heavy stop and go traffic is awesome, give it a try..oh yea! let’s you roll around the traffic jam. Who picks low hanging fruit? Well, kids do…it’s fun for children, ‘our children’ and the young person in all of us. I’m glad we can name our cars….. kids love it… and it makes going for a ride a lot of fun for them. …..not everything is about the adults! Elon’s got young children and he is probably taking a few inputs from them!! i hope they add geo-fencing for arrival home. Selectable of course! Open the garage door, roll the windows up, close the sunroof, and once in park..pop the charge port door, ajar the door and position the seat and steering wheel for exit!
The car gets updates! It makes the car new again and again.
……. and again! Kind of amazing!

They made it sounds like your vehicle (with your permission) will be sharing anonymous data (location, speed, etc.) with Tesla navigation servers to help the re-routing of all drivers.

I am guessing they are going to use this on top of Google traffic data or some other source. There aren’t enough Teslas (right now) to rely on cars as the only data, except for a few areas (Bay Area, Norway cities, etc.).